TODAY IN HISYTORY

 

Francis Scott Key pens “The Star-Spangled Banner”

On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key pens a poem which is later set to music and in 1931 becomes America’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The poem, originally titled “The Defence of Fort M'Henry,” was written after Key witnessed the Maryland fort being bombarded by the British during the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the sight of a lone U.S. flag still flying over Fort McHenry at daybreak, as reflected in the now-famous words of the “Star-Spangled Banner”: “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

Francis Scott Key was born on August 1, 1779, at Terra Rubra, his family’s estate in Frederick County (now Carroll County), Maryland. He became a successful lawyer in Maryland and Washington, D.C., and was later appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

On June 18, 1812, America declared war on Great Britain after a series of trade disagreements. In August 1814, British troops invaded Washington, D.C., and burned the White House, Capitol Building and Library of Congress. Their next target was Baltimore.

After one of Key’s friends, Dr. William Beanes, was taken prisoner by the British, Key went to Baltimore, located the ship where Beanes was being held and negotiated his release. However, Key and Beanes weren’t allowed to leave until after the British bombardment of Fort McHenry. Key watched the bombing campaign unfold from aboard a ship located about eight miles away. After a day, the British were unable to destroy the fort and gave up. Key was relieved to see the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry and quickly penned a few lines in tribute to what he had witnessed.

The poem was printed in newspapers and eventually set to the music of a popular English drinking tune called “To Anacreon in Heaven” by composer John Stafford Smith. People began referring to the song as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson announced that it should be played at all official events. It was adopted as the national anthem on March 3, 1931.

Francis Scott Key died of pleurisy on January 11, 1843. 

SPORTS

1994

MLB cancels playoffs, World Series

With players on strike since mid-August, Major League Baseball on September 14, 1994, cancels its playoffs and World Series. This marks the first time since 1904 that a season will end without the crowning a champion. It also prematurely ends one of the sport’s most exciting seasons in recent memory.

CIVIL WAR

1862

North and South clash at the Battle of South Mountain

General Robert E. Lee’s exhausted Confederate forces hold off the pursuing Yankees by closing two passes through Maryland’s South Mountain, allowing Lee time to gather his forces further west along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg. After the Second Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, in late August 1862, Lee decided to invade Maryland to raise supplies; he also hoped a decisive win would earn the South foreign recognition. As he moved, he split his army into five sections while the hungry Rebels searched for supplies. A copy of the Confederate plans accidentally fell into Union hands when the orders were left in an abandoned campsite outside of Frederick, Maryland. McClellan now knew that Lee’s force was in pieces, but he was slow to react.

21ST CENTURY

2015

Muslim teen arrested for bringing reassembled clock to school

A 14-year-old Muslim boy is arrested at his high school in Irving, Texas after a digital clock he had reassembled at home using a pencil case was mistaken by his teacher to be a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at the time, was questioned by police, detained and led in handcuffs to a juvenile detention center and suspended from school for three days for what authorities called a “hoax bomb,” but what was actually a homemade clock.

MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR

1847

General Winfield Scott captures Mexico City

During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott enter Mexico City and raise the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier. 

FRANCE

1812

Napoleon enters Moscow

One week after winning a bloody victory over the Russian army at the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée enters the city of Moscow, only to find the population evacuated and the Russian army retreated again. Moscow was the goal of the invasion, but the deserted city held no czarist officials to sue for peace and no great stores of food or supplies to reward the French soldiers for their long march. Then, just after midnight, fires broke out across the city, apparently set by Russian patriots, leaving Napoleon’s massive army with no means to survive the coming Russian winter.

RELIGION

1975

Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes first American-born saint

Elizabeth Ann Seton is canonized by Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in Rome, becoming one of the first American-born Catholic saint. Born in New York City in 1774, Elizabeth Bayley was the daughter of an Episcopalian physician. She devoted much of her time to charity work with the  poor and in 1797 founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children in New York. She married William Seton, and in 1803 she traveled with him to Italy, where she was exposed to the Roman Catholic Church. After she herself was widowed and left with five children in 1803, she converted to Catholicism and in 1808 went to Baltimore to establish a Catholic school for girls.

U.S. PRESIDENTS

1901

President McKinley dies of infection from gunshot wounds

U.S. President William McKinley dies after being shot by a deranged anarchist during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York on September 14, 1901. McKinley won his first Congressional seat at the age of 34 and spent 14 years in the House, becoming known as the leading Republican expert on tariffs. After losing his seat in 1890, McKinley served two terms as governor of Ohio. By 1896, he had emerged as the leading Republican candidate for president, aided by the support of the wealthy Ohio industrialist Mark Hanna. That fall, McKinley defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan, by the largest popular margin since the Civil War.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1964

John Steinbeck awarded the Medal of Freedom

Writer John Steinbeck was presented the U.S. Medal of Freedom on September 14, 1964. Steinbeck had already received numerous other honors and awards for his writing, including the 1962 Nobel Prize and a 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck, a native Californian, studied writing intermittently at Stanford between 1920 and 1925 but never graduated. He moved to New York and worked as a manual laborer and journalist while writing his first two novels, which were not successful. He married in 1930 and moved back to California with his wife. His father, a government official in Salinas County, gave the couple a house to live in while Steinbeck continued writing.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1982

Hollywood star and real-life princess Grace Kelly dies

On September 14, 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco—the American-born former film star Grace Kelly, whose movie credits include The Country Girl and Rear Window—dies at the age of 52 from injuries suffered after her car plunged off a mountain road near Monte Carlo. 

NATURAL DISASTERS & ENVIRONMENT

1999

Millions flee from Hurricane Floyd

Millions of people evacuate their homes as Hurricane Floyd moves across the Atlantic Ocean on September 14, 1999. Over the next several days, deaths are recorded from the Bahamas to New England due to the powerful storm. Floyd began as a tropical storm on September 7 and attained hurricane status three days later. By September 12, its winds had reached 140 miles per hour as the storm approached the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Floyd skirted past these islands, though, leaving relatively minor damage in its wake.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1974

“I Shot the Sheriff” hits the song charts

“I Shot the Sheriff” hits No. 1 on the music charts. While the song had been written by reggae legend Bob Marley the previous year, it was Eric Clapton’s version that ascended to the top of the charts. Crime and murder have been the subject of popular recorded music since the  invention of the phonograph. “Stagolee,” also known and performed as “Stagger Lee,” was one of the 20th century’s first hits. The lyrics, in which the theft of a Stetson hat leads to the death of a self-professed family man, were based on an actual murder that occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1894 or 1895. Over the years, versions of the song have been recorded by hundreds of artists, including, more recently, the Grateful Dead and Nick Cave.

COLD WAR

1959

Soviet probe reaches the moon

A Soviet rocket crashes into the moon’s surface, becoming the first man-made object sent from earth to reach the lunar surface. The event gave the Soviets a short-lived advantage in the “space race” and prompted even greater effort by the United States to develop its own space program.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1927

Dancer Isadora Duncan is killed in car accident

On September 14, 1927, dancer Isadora Duncan is strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf she is wearing gets tangled in the rear hubcaps of her open car. (“Affectations,” said Gertrude Stein when she heard the news of Duncan’s death, “can be dangerous.”) Isadora Duncan was born in 1877 in San Francisco and moved to Europe to become a dancer when she was in her early 20s. She had always loved to dance–in her teens, she worked as a dance teacher at her mother’s music school–but Duncan was not a classically trained ballerina. On the contrary, she was a free-spirited bohemian whose dances were improvisational and emotional; they were choreographed, she said, “to rediscover the beautiful, rhythmical motions of the human body.” In contrast to the short tutus and stiff shoes that ballet dancers wore, Duncan typically danced barefoot, wrapped in flowing togas and scarves. Female audiences, in particular, adored her: In an era when classical ballet was falling out of favor with many sophisticated people (and when the scantily-clad dancers themselves were, more often than not, “sponsored” by wealthy male patrons), Duncan’s performances celebrated independence and self-expression.

WORLD WAR II

1944

Americans launch Operation Stalemate—at extraordinary cost

On September 14, 1944, the U.S. 1st Marine Division lands on the island of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands in the Pacific, as part of a larger operation to provide support for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was preparing to invade the Philippines.